Intel and Samsung announced new Solid State Drive (SSD) products recently to address the growing needs of cloud applications and big data demands.

Intel's Next-Generation SSD

Intel (INTC) unveiled its next-generation data center solid-state drive, the DC S3700 Series, designed to remove storage bottlenecks and maximize multi-core CPU performance. The DC S3700 combines high I/O with low latency. It delivers 4KB random read performance of up to 75,000 IOPS and 4KB write performance of up to 36,000 IOPS. It is a 6 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) SATA drive with performance transfer rates of 500 megabyte per second (MB/s) reads and 460 MB/s writes.

The drive incorporates Intel High Endurance Technology (HET) to deliver single-level cell SSD-like endurance in more cost-effective multi-level cell (MLC) technology. By combining SSD NAND management techniques with NAND silicon enhancements, HET enables the Intel SSD DC S37000 Series to achieve 10 full drive writes per day over the 5-year life of the drive. This is the equivalent of recording more than 186 years of HD video over the life of the highest capacity 800GB drive.

The 2.5 inch form factor drive comes in 100,200,400 and 800 GB capacities and a 1.8 inch form factor is offered in 200GB and 400GB capacities. Intel also recently announced a SSD 335 series SSD, using 20-nanometer NAND flash process. The product is Intel's first SSD to use the latest 20nm NAND flash memory jointly developed by IM Flash Technologies (IMFT).

Samsung Enterprise SSD for Data Centers

Samsung announced that it is producing advanced solid state drives (SSDs) that are designed specifically for use in servers and enterprise storage systems. The SM843 and the SM1625 drives are targeted at a wide range of server and storage applications that depend on extremely fast data writing, such as cloud, SQL database logs, media streaming and virtualization.

"Samsung's new data center and enterprise SSDs deliver extremely high performance with low power consumption in providing the most efficient storage solutions for data center applications," said Myungho Kim, vice president of memory marketing, Device Solutions, Samsung Electronics. "Samsung will aggressively produce its new line-up of SSDs beginning this month to accelerate SSDs' move into not only the server but also the storage marketplace, as we continue to affirm our leadership in the SSD market."

The SM843 drive contains a multi-level chip (MLC) SSD, that can write up to 1,064 terabytes written, representing a more than 160 percent improvement from previous Samsung SSD generations. It is offered in 120GB, 240GB and 480GB capacities. The SM1625 drive is Samsung's first dual-ported SAS SSD, and comes in 110GB, 200GB, 400GB and 800GB capacities. Designed for use in external storage systems for high availability (HA) environments, the SM1625 features up to 23,000 (sustained) random write IOPS, and randomly reads up to 101,000 IOPS when using both ports. The Samsung's SM1625 writes data sequentially at 740MB/s and reads it at 848MB/s when using both ports. It also will provide power loss protection to ensure data is safe in a power outage.